l." You know the old captain, Richie?

Temple had tears in his eyes. We both stood blinking for a second or
two.

I could not but be curious to hear the reason for Edbury's having
determined to sail.

'Don't you understand how it was, Richie?' said Temple. 'Edbury went
to persuade her to stay, or just to see her for once, and he came to
persuasions. He seems to have been succeeding, but the captain stepped
on board and he treated Edbury as he did us two: he made him take the
voyage for discipline's sake and "his soul's health."'

'How do you know all this, Temple?'

'You know your friend Kiomi was one of the party. The captain sent her
back on shore because he had no room for her. She told us Edbury offered
bribes of hundreds and thousands for the captain to let him and Mabel go
off in the boat with Kiomi, and then he took to begging to go alone.
He tried to rouse the crew. The poor fellow cringed, she says; he
threatened to swim off. The captain locked him up.'

My immediate reflections hit on the Bible lessons Edbury must have had
to swallow, and the gaping of the waters when its truths were suddenly
and tremendously brought home to him.

An odd series of accidents! I thought.

Temple continued: 'Heriot held his tongue about it next morning. He was
one of the guests, though he had sworn he wouldn't go. He said something
to Janet that betrayed him, for she had not seen him since.'

'How betrayed him?' said I.

'Why,' said Temple, 'of course it was Heriot who put Edbury in Kiomi's
hands. Edbury wouldn't have known of Mabel's sailing, or known the
vessel she was in, without her help. She led him down to the water and
posted him in sight before she went to Captain Welsh's; and when you and
Captain Welsh walked away, Edbury rowed to the Priscilla. Old Heriot
is not responsible for the consequences. What he supposed was likely
enough. He thought that Edbury and Mabel were much of a pair, and
thought, I suppose, that if Edbury saw her he'd find he couldn't leave
her, and old Lady Kane, who managed him, would stand nodding her plumes
for nothing at the altar. And so she did: and a pretty scene it was.
She snatched at the minutes as they slipped past twelve like fishes, and
snarled at the parson, and would have kept him standing till one P.M.,
if Janet had not turned on her heel. The old woman got in front of her
to block her way. "Ah, Temple," she said to me, "it would be hard if I
could not think I had done all t